Hey rockstar_not and ROG, thanks for the suggestions. I have a small room that I'll be using to record in. At the moment, it has NO room treatment in the way of acoustic foam or anything else. I will however soon be building a small vocal recording booth inside that room, and then eventually padding the room out to make it acoustically viable.

I've read a lot of good things about the Shure SM 58, as well as the Rode mic that Matt mentioned. I kinda had a leaning towards the Shure SM 58, simply because of its long history and great all -round performance. I'll be checking out the Audio Technica mics that you mentioned in the next day or so. Everything was going a bit slow for me for a while there but now I'm going full bore to get what I need by the end of the year and start making some music.

Rog, thanks for the tip on the Focusrite Audio interfaces. I have read many positive reviews on them but the only thing that concerns me is that many users have commented on the latency problem with them. Yet, I have read other users reviews and they are very happy, with no latency issues, with their latency being around 5ms on average. I have a Texas Instrument Firewire port on my Gigabyte motherboard, so I know any Focusrite AI should work with this. ROG, what's your personal take on the latency of the Focusrite interfaces? I'm keen to know before I dive in.

Many thanks again for all your input,
Cheers,
Dome

BIAB Audiophile, Reaper, Kontakt Full Edition, Roland A90-EX Master Controller MIDI keyboard, Windows 7 x64